SYDNEY MAN SPURNS BURDEN OF WEALTH

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6755, 7 November 1928, Page 4

SYDNEY MAN SPURNS BURDEN OF WEALTH

-T CHIEF DESIRE IS WELFARE OF HTJMANIT r . SYDNEY, Oct, 25. When Mr George H. Bosch, a business man, who is the soul of kindness, recently gave £220,000 to the Sydney University, it brought the total of his gifts to that institution to £250,000. As a result of his latest gift the university will have a medical school' that will rank with the most advanced in the world. The establishment of full-time c-.airs will mean a great change in the method of training ,and humanity in general -pill benefit. That being so, Mr Bosch will be satisfied, for the welfare of humanity seems to be his special desire. Since the generosity of Mr Bosch has received so much publicity, which he himself did not seek, he has been pestered By people begging financial help. "I simply must get away,” he said tne other day,. “Since my big gift my life has been almost unbearable. My health has broken down twice, and I don't want to risk another. I have received hundreds of letters asking for money from all manner of .persons. ”

Mr Bosch has decided to go away for at least four months, and he has taken many of the appeals with him. He says that he will sift out the genuine cases. Already he has filled scores of waste-paper baskets with Ibtters which, he is convinced, were not genuine. Every time he went out into the street he was pestered by someone with a tale of woe or a madcap financial, proposal. ’ He simply had to get away from it all. “Money is only Money.” before he left Mr Bosch said that his doctrine was that a man who amassed Wealth from a business that had prospered was no more than a trustee for that money. He was under a moral obligation to use it in J some worthy cause that would help as many, of his fellow men as possible. He sincerely trusted that what he had done would prompt other wealthy men to do likewise. “Why should I hold a big accumulation of money?” he asked., “I will always have enough' to buy a good cigar. And after all, money is only money, and a good cigar is a smoke.” ■ i Vj»“ Mr Bosch is a bachelor, 67 years of age, and his life hobby, his obsession, has been. work. Most people think that he owns a million, but they are wrong. He .is,,far fropx a. milionaire, and his latest gift represents far more than a mere fraction of his wealth. He has for years been distributing the wealth he amassed in a systematic way He does not lend money.. He turned his business into a i limited company and gave it to his employees wrth a most liberal scale of earnings on their investments;

“If more men of wealth would do this,” Mr Bosch said, “instead of regarding ; a. business as merely a well from which'to draw dividends and profits that their employees give their lives in grinding out, there would be no need to talk about the menace of Bolshevism or the discontent of the masses. Means to Help Worthy Causes. . “To me a business that prospers a* ■mine has done is a means at my hand to do a vast amount of good. It is an agency that puts me in a position of being able to give substantial help to worthy causes such as education and riiedical research, reaching to the benefit of thousands.” Eeferring to his own needs, he, stated that £IO,OOO invested at, say, 6 per cent., would return enough to satisfy his requirements. He could not eat more titan he does now, and he can only wear suit at a time. And once a ,man reached 70- his needs for pleasure were slight. “My parents,” said Mr Bsch, “were very poor. • My father never earned more than 6s 6d; a day, as a quarrymfin, who fed. a stone-crushing machine. I served as a watchmaker’s apprentice, and eventually reached £3 a week. What to me was more pleasurable than amassing wealth, was the prize of £3 3s that a watchmaker in Bourke Street, Melbourne, gave me for a wateh that I made for a* technical exhibition in 1877. I always wallowed in work. I love it. For 20 years I worked from 8.0 in the morning until 10.30 at night. ” -